Korora 24 is a fairly solid operating system : Review

Fedorais very much aligned with policies of Free Software Foundation, and it does not ship any proprietary package as part of operating system, except a few kernel blobs which are required to support certain hardware components. The commitment of Fedora to it's policies comes at the cost of user experience. If you install Fedora and want to use real world media files and other things, you will have to install some proprietary components and plugins yourself. This makes Fedora a non-noob distribution.

The Korora operating system is an attempt to overcome the limitations Fedora caused by it's commitment to 100% free software compliance. Korora combines Fedora base, with 3rd party packages and repositories to make it more usable and noob friendly distribution. It also, refines 5 different desktop environments with a wise choice of themes and packages to provide best user exprience.

Latest issue of distrowatch weekly(28th August 2016) has published a review on recently released Korora 24. The review observes that, Korora 24 is a fairly solid distribution and it has succeeded in choosing the right packages for users. This is done without being much different from parent distribution. In another words, Korora users can enjoy all benefits of Fedora, with additional Korora benefits.

Korora 24 MATE

The latest release of Korora, version 24, is based on Fedora 24 and includes the same changes and technology as its parent. The Korora release is available in four flavours (Cinnamon, GNOME, MATE and Xfce). A fifth edition featuring KDE's Plasma desktop is planned, but was not available when I began this review. The new release media is available for the 64-bit x86 architecture exclusively, however existing Korora 23 users who run 32-bit systems can perform live upgrades to Korora 24. The Pharlap driver manager has been removed from this release.

I decided to try the MATE edition of Korora 24 which is available as a 2GB download. The live media boots to the MATE desktop. At the top of the display we find the Applications, Places and System menus along with the system tray. Down the left side we find a quick-launch bar and there is a task switcher at the bottom of the screen. On the desktop is a single icon for launching the system installer. Shortly after the desktop loads, a welcome screen appears. The welcome screen offers us quick access to various resources, including a document on finding additional software and community support. The welcome screen provides us with a list of new features available in Korora 24 (such as version 6 of the GNU Compiler Collection). Other buttons on the welcome screen launch the system installer and open a web browser to the project's support forum.